Your ideas are hugely valuable.

--S.B., Orinda, CA, novelist

“The endeavor of writing can be long and lonely. Mary Carroll Moore, master writing instructor, to the rescue! Moore packs How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book with years of gritty good sense and big-picture perspective. Her techniques for drafting, organizing, and polishing a book are practical and time-tested. Here is a first-time book-writer’s best companion.”

--Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew,author of Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir

If I could implement all I've learned from you, I'd have a best-seller!

Pretend you’re a reporter for the New York Times. You’re going to interview your book idea.

List some questions you’d love to ask your book about its form, content, goals. You can start with something nonthreatening, as you would if you were a real reporter.

Ask your book some very good questions. Some ideas from my class are below, or you can make up your own:

What do you want to tell me about yourself?What form suits you best?Who is your readership and how will theyaccess you?What are you most eager to say?What are you most afraid to say?What genre are you?

When it runs out of things to say (or you getnervous about the answers) ask a different question.

The goal of this book-writing exercise is to surprise yourself. You’ll tap the hidden parts of yourself as a writer, the parts we often censor. You can strike gold--if you maintain the attitude of no-assumptions and anything can happen.

Books for the Blocked--These'll Get You Moving Again!

Escaping into the Open by Elizabeth Berg

Listen to Me by Lynn Lauber

Marry Your Muse by Jan Phillips

Pencil Dancing by Mari Messer

The Art of Slow Writing by Louise DeSalvo

Thinking about Memoir by Abigail Thomas

Write Your Heart Out by Rebecca McClanahan

A person’s life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art, or love, or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.Albert Camus

Saturday, June 12, 2010

I've been reading Amy Bloom's new book, Where the God of Love Hangs Out, a collection of interrelated short stories that form a sort of novel. Although a few stories were published in earlier collections, this grouping takes the characters another step.

I like practically everything I've read of Bloom's work. I appreciate the intricate weavings she manages, and I often recommend her to students struggling with character and pacing.

There's a trend in publishing right now of such collections, sometimes called story cycles. Olive Kitteridge won much attention last year; it's a group of stories about a small town in Maine and a fierce retired schoolteacher. It's tricky to create a story cycle that keeps the reader engaged as well as a novel, leaving us wanting to dive into the next chapter without hesitation once we finish one story. Short stories by their nature are complete in themselves. But a story cycle must release some of that finished feel and create a whole-book rhythm.

In Olive Kitteridge, author Elizabeth Strout stays with the traditional rules--a group of characters, a single place--which gives sense to the collection. Olive builds a strong emotional arc and can be looked at as a three-act structure without much difficulty. Act 1 sets the stage for Olive's scowly nature in the small community, with her strong personality often repelling those she loves. The finale of Act 1 presents us with the first big tragedy, her husband Henry's stroke.

Act 2 continues with Olive's life after Henry goes into a nursing home. It moves toward the second big turning point, Olive's visit to her nearly estranged son. This is where we begin to see Olive as vulnerable, as human, as needing love. By the third act, I felt great compassion toward this character, and admired Strout's success in making someone so unlovable, lovable.

Bloom's characters are equally difficult to love. We start off with four stories about William and Clare, deep into an affair. Their marriages die because of it, they marry each other. William is an obese man with gout and a swollen foot the size of a turnip, not your average romantic figure. Clare is as fierce as Olive and can't really explain why William is the one she loves. We end the section, Act 1 of the collection, with William's death and Clare's disorientation.

Between Acts 1 and 2, Bloom creates an intermezzo, a between-courses diversion into another unrelated story. Act 2 launches us into deeper waters: Julia and her grown stepson Lionel are dancing with their attraction after Julia's husband dies.

While Olive Kitteridge gave us movement from Act 1 to Act 2 with Olive's internal growth from dark to light, Bloom's travels the territory of deep human mistakes and the irreversible consequences to the human spirit. After Julia and Lionel make love in the upsetting aftermath of Lionel's father's funeral, the effect erodes their lives in unexpected ways. Bloom doesn't moralize, even though Julia and Lionel's story will be extremely difficult for many readers. She believably ups the stakes, creates the one-two punch so necessary in the first two acts of a three-act structure.

Act 1 starts a certain question or quest, and the momentum of it should carry the reader to the first big crisis at the end of Act 1. If you start pretty low, you need to go even lower. Consider Act 1 the point of no return. What is going to come about as a result of that?

In Bloom's book, at the beginning of Act 1 William and Clare begin their affair. By the end of Act 1 William is dead and Clare begins to live with her choice: she can't go back to her family, her friends, the way things were, and William is no longer there to make sense of it all for her.

In a short story collection, Act 2 must take this consequence and raise the stakes, put someone at greater risk. What much worse thing could happen? Maybe for Bloom this was Julia, after her husband's death, sleeping with her stepson. Act 2's action creates deeper effect than Act 1.

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Upcoming Writing Classes with Mary

Whether you are trying to write the story of your life for publication or as a family legacy, this class by the author of two memoirs will show you how to organize your stories into readable, interesting work. You'll be introduced to a simple formula that successful authors use to find the central conflict of their story, then plan, organize, and write scenes and chapters around it. We'll explore the value of themes, how action and reflection balance one another in memoir and creative nonfiction, and authorial voice versus narrative voice. $105. Click here for details or to register.Writing RetreatsYour Book Starts Here: Week-long Writing Retreat July 30-August 3, Madeline Island School of the Arts, Lake Superior Five days of workshop, personal coaching, and plenty of time to work on your book in our great community of book writers at all stages, working in all genres, on gorgeous Madeline Island off the coast of northern Wisconsin. This retreat will become a highlight of your summer. Great meals and lodging on campus. $775. Click here for details.

Independent Study for Book Writers July 30-August 3, Madeline Island School of the Arts, Lake Superior Craving time, quiet, and a wonderful space to finally get working (or finishing) your book? But enough support each day, plus community, to do it sanely and safely? Five days of personal coaching, plenty of time to write, and optional workshops to attend make this independent study week productive, creative bliss. Great meals and lodging on campus. $775. Click here for details.

A Little about Me . . .

Mary Carroll Moore is an award-winning, internationally published author of thirteen books in three genres, writing teacher, editor and book doctor for publishing houses. For thirty years she's helped thousands of new and experienced writers plan, write, and develop--and publish!--their books. Photo by Bruce Fuller Photography.

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If you believe you have a book inside you just waiting to come out, here is a guide that will ensure your book’s arrival in the world. In clear, accessible prose, Mary Carroll Moore leads the aspiring author through every step of the challenging, rewarding process of developing and completing a full-length book.

--Rebecca McClanahan, author of Word Painting

Encouraging Words--Well-Known Writers with Large Number of Rejections--But Published!

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo--397 rejections (and it became a movie)A Wrinkle in Timeby Madeleine L'Engle--97 rejections (and it won the Newbery Medal for best children's book of 1963; it's now in its 69th printing)Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson--40 rejections (and it has won multiple awards and sold 150,000 hard copies). Judy Blume says she received "nothing but rejections" for 2 years.Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot--17 rejectionsHarry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling--rejected by 9 publishersThe Diary of Anne Frank--16 rejections (and now more than 30 million copies are in print)Dr. Seuss books--more than 15 rejectionsJonathan Livingston Seagullby Richard Bach--140 rejectionsGone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell--38 rejectionsWatership Down by Richard Adams--26 rejectionsDune by Frank Herbert--nearly 20 rejections

To all book writers: Believe in your story. Keep trying. The right home for your book is out there, waiting for you to discover it.

Want to get the creative brain going?

Book writers (and any writers) need to know how to engage the creative right brain that "writes" in images. Think of any wonderful book that's left you swimming in a setting or characters--the writer has successfully used the image-creating part of the brain. But our normal workaday lives short-circuit this part. Check out this cool video of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist at Harvard Medical School, recounting her personal experience of a left-brain stroke and her awakening to right-brain reality. Pretty amazing fusion of brain science with what it feels like to a brain scientist having a stroke:http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

Flying Squirrels Bring Creative Jolt to Novelist

Flying squirrel gets into house--disrupts routine, gets novelist thinking differently. This happened to me! For two days, as I chased the squirrel (actually, it was all night since they are nocturnal), I slept very little. And got many new ideas for my novel-in-progress.Go figure!Maybe...book writers need creative jolts? Routine dulls our imaginations? How has an unexpected interruption actually been a gift for your creativity this week?

At the Loft Literary Center, I can always tell which students in my classes have taken Mary Carroll Moore’s class on book-writing. They talk about writing their book in "islands" and using storyboards to figure out how those sections relate to each other. When another student confesses to feeling overwhelmed by the material her memoir might include, they readily advise, “You should try Mary Carroll Moore’s method.” I second that.--Cheri Register, author of Packinghouse Daughter and American Book Award winner

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